Why the Frame Matters More Than the Product

I used to have a love affair with a specific clothing brand. Seriously, you could find me dressed in their stuff from head to toe. My obsession started a few years back when I learned about the founder’s story—his vision, his insane attention to detail, and the creative wizardry he put into every piece. This brand wasn’t just about clothes; it was about one-of-a-kind designs for daily life, and yeah, they came with a premium price tag.

Then one day, while scrolling through social media, it all fell apart. The founder posted a video tour of his production facility in China. The goal was clearly to show off the brand's explosive growth—how many items they were making and the massive scale of the operation. But as I watched, the magic just vanished.

It wasn’t that the clothes were made in China, and it wasn’t the workers or the factory conditions. It was seeing the exact shoes I was wearing at that moment being spit out of a machine and thrown into a pile of thousands of identical pairs. It was seeing my t-shirt in a giant, dumpster-like bin, overflowing with countless others.

My mind had built this narrative that each item was a unique piece of art, maybe even handcrafted by the founder himself. The brand never said that, of course, but that was the story I believed based on everything they’d shown me. The only evidence I had was artistry and exclusivity. Logically, I knew there had to be mass production, but our feelings about brands aren't logical. In that moment, the frame around my favorite brand shattered.

Perception is a Powerful Thing

How something is presented has a huge impact on how we receive it. A good is built on understanding that the frame around a product can completely change how customers perceive its value. This isn't a new discovery. Think back to the famous Pepsi Challenge in the 1970s. People did blind taste tests of Pepsi and Coke from plain white cups and then from their normal branded cans. The results were wild: people preferred Pepsi in the blind test but preferred Coke when they knew what they were drinking. The branding—the frame—literally changed how the soda tasted to them.

Walk into a typical electronics store today, and you’re hit with a jungle of wires, gadgets, and batteries stacked from floor to ceiling. The old-school thinking was that showing more products gives you a better chance of making a sale. It’s logical, but Apple figured out that people aren’t always logical. Every Apple Store is a masterclass in using framing to persuade us that spending a couple of thousand dollars on an iPhone is a great idea.

They designed their stores to feel more like art galleries than cluttered retail spaces. This is a core part of their . By displaying only a few items with lots of empty space around them, they tap into the power of scarcity. We intuitively know that retail space is expensive, so when a single phone gets so much real estate, our brains assume it must be incredibly valuable. We pour the value of that empty space right into the product itself.

Sometimes, Less Is More

This principle is something every should consider. I'm an investor in a company called WHOOP, a health-monitoring wearable that tracks key biometrics. It's now valued at $3.6 billion and is used by athletes like Cristiano Ronaldo and LeBron James, competing against giants like Apple and Fitbit. A huge part of their success comes from a genius focus on framing.

The CEO once told me they’ve always resisted adding a time display to their wristband, even though it would be simple to do. Why? Because adding a screen would change the frame. It would shift the customer's perception of the device from an elite health tracker to just another watch. For a , this kind of decision is critical. By adding something objectively useful—the time—they would have actually the product's psychological value. In the world of branding, less is often more.

Here are a few more examples of how a simple change in framing can make all the difference:

• In 2019, I advised a large B2B company to get rid of the job title "salesperson" and replace it with a "partnerships" team. Their email response rates shot up, and sales grew by 31%. The word "sales" primes people to feel like they're about to be pushed into buying something. "Partner," on the other hand, suggests someone is on their team.
• When Elon Musk promised to stop using leather in Tesla cars, he kept his word. The interiors are now made of something they call "vegan leather." As advertising legend Rory Sutherland pointed out, they instinctively understood the power of framing. Instead of calling the new seats "plastic"—which they are—they held onto the luxury perception of "leather" to maintain the car's value. A smart often relies on choosing the right words.

Your Frame Is Your Message

Framing isn't about deception; it's about presenting your product or service through the most compelling and factual lens. Saying a food is "90% lean" is much more appealing than saying it "contains 10% fat." Both are true, but one frame is psychologically more attractive. This is fundamental to any successful effort.

These examples all point to a principle that's too often forgotten: reality is just perception, and context is everything. The frame truly does matter more than the picture. What you say is shaped by the context it exists in. If you change the frame, you change the message. A strong frame can elevate the ordinary, and a poor one can diminish the incredible. It's a lesson any or established needs to master.